PAULSBORO — Students in Gina Mariano’s seventh grade science classes have been learning all about the purpose of the human body’s internal organs, and were able to put it into perspective Thursday when two organ recipients visited the classroom to talk about their own experiences.

For the past few weeks, the middle schoolers have learned what kidneys, livers, hearts and lungs do to keep the body running. They have also been learning about organ donation and transplantation, and the importance it can have in some people’s lives.

In order to drive home just how much of a difference it can make, Mariano invited two of her friends Mike Charboneau and Walt McGuire — both organ transplant recipients — to come in and tell their stories.

Charboneau, a resident of West Deptford and a woodshop teacher at Overbrook High School, told of how he learned his kidneys were failing and the process it took for him to receive a new organ.

“I was in renal failure, but I had no idea my body was shutting down,” he told the class.

Similarly, McGuire, who drove to Paulsboro from his home in Cincinnati, Ohio to speak to the kids, discussed his own experiences needing not one, but three organs at one time.

“I have Amyloidosis. It damaged my heart, liver and kidney. None of them worked well,” he said.

He spent months in the hospital before finding a match and he eventually received the kidney and heart.

Wearing green ribbons in support of organ donation, the students read poems they wrote about their guests and what they had learned about organ donation, as well as asked multiple questions about the process, what it feels like, if the individuals felt different after their surgeries and more.

“It taught me you can survive as long as you believe in yourself,” Lamonte Smith, one of the students, said.

For Mariano, the guests were an opportunity to let the kids see first-hand why organ donation was something to discuss.

“We’ve been talking about the function of cells and organs in the body,” she said. “It’s easy to say it, or read it in a text book, but this makes it more real.

And for the guest speakers, it was an opportunity to spread the word and get more knowledge about organ donation to the community.

“A lot of time parents don’t know about organ transplants. They learn from their children,” Charboneau said.